


Throughout The Ages

by mango22



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-04-07 13:06:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19085647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mango22/pseuds/mango22
Summary: "Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form." - RumiJon and Daenerys throughout the ages, as they are reincarnated, find each other and lose each other all over again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been wanting to write a reincarnation au for jonerys for some time after the finale and I don't really know if reincarnation even exists in the got world/lore but let's just roll with it (if d&d can have the dokrathi respawning and multiplying in every scene in ep 5 and 6 after saying we "essentially saw the end of the dokrathi in ep 3" I can reincarnate jon & dany multiple times as well) We can all bend the rules of magic! 👏🏽
> 
> The gorgeous moodboard created by https://adecila.tumblr.com/ (thanks so much hun!)
> 
> Anywho hope ya'll like it! (might possibly write a sequel/other chapters exploring each lifetime~)

_He always finds her. And he always loses her._  
  
~  
  
Jon is the one who remembered. He was the one who shouldered the burden of the past, the burden of truth.  
  
The first time, he saw her at the marketplace. He forgot how to breathe. Dressed in a simple white robe with her open hair flowing down her back, she looked carefree and young.  
  
Far too young to be with child.  
  
She placed a hand on her stomach as she carefully scanned the fruits for marks, and Jon  _ached_  with longing.  
  
He noticed her struggling to pick up her basket and immediately rushed to help. She looked up at him with grateful eyes and thanked him.  
  
Her smile was too kind.  
  
_Ignorance is bliss._  
  
Jon watched her walk away with a thousand words trapped in his throat. He gave voice to none of them, choosing to instead make a promise to himself: he would do all he could to protect her this time. He would not allow history to repeat itself.   
  
This would be his purpose, this was why he was given a second chance, he figured.  
  
When he learned that she died giving birth to her son, he felt hollow all over again.  
  
_Just like my mother. Like hers too._  
  
He followed her soon afterwards.  
  
~  
  
The next time they met he was the one near death.  
  
A WWII soldier. Severely injured, missing an arm and with a hole where his left eye should be. Everyone had all but written him off as a lost cause.  
  
Except for the nurse with the unusual violet eyes. She took it upon herself to care for him day and night. Treated his wounds, fed him by hand, changed his clothes.  
  
Some nights she would simply sit beside him and read from books he would choose, her soft voice soothing him to sleep despite the unbearable pain.  
  
She was his only comfort, his only joy.  
  
And she was shot dead in a riot a month later.   
  
Jon succumbed to his injuries that same night.  
  
~  
  
The stars had failed to align properly this time. He was a grown man and she was only a child.   
  
Only a ten year old.  
  
The new student in his classroom.  
  
_Please_ , he begged. To whatever entity was responsible for this, for trapping them in this curse.   
  
Bringing them together only to tear them apart.  
  
_Please don't hurt her this time. Take me instead. Punish me. Leave her alone._  
  
But of course it happened.  
  
Of course she suddenly fell ill, withering away right in front of his eyes.   
  
A healthy little girl dying for no discernable reason. Other than the fact that he had entered her life.  
  
A car accident claimed his a week later.  
  
~  
  
One time, by a cruel twist of fate, they were related.  
  
She was the estranged aunt he had never met, and he was the distant nephew she had heard about once or twice.  
  
When they 'accidentally' met at a bar, she had no idea who he really was. So when she began to flirt, Jon should've stopped it. Revealed his true identity.  
  
He did the opposite. He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her, catching her off guard with such a strong reaction. She got over her surprise quickly though and began kissing him back, but that wasn't enough for him.  
  
He took her back to his apartment, carried her up the stairs and set her down on his bed. She laughed at his eagerness, his almost frenzied rush.  
  
_I'm not going to disappear,_  she told him in between kisses.   
  
In response he only held her closer, kissed her harder.   
  
When she came with his name on her lips, he almost corrected her.   
  
_It's Jon. My name is Jon. And your name is Daenerys._  
  
When she found their family photo in the morning she threw up. Disgusted beyond belief, she turned to him with a half accusatory half questioning glance.  
  
_Did you know? Tell me you didn't know._  
  
He wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. What a joke. What a big, elaborate fucking joke.  
  
The years made him harsher. Raw and perverse.  
  
So he didn't deny it. He watched as the horror settled in her eyes and she ran away from him.  
  
_No love, only fear._  
  
He finally understood just how he had made her feel all those lifetimes ago.   
  
He never heard from her again, but knew in his heart she had died when he found out about his late stage cancer not a month after that incident.  
  
_I am coming Dany._  
  
~  
  
An endless loop.  
  
They meet, a brief moment of joy, kinship, love and  _relief_ , before the inevitable darkness of death took them away.  
  
Till they are reborn again.  
  
Jon could not imagine a crueler punishment for his betrayal.   
  
_You killed her once, now you get to see her suffer the same fate in a myriad of ways, all because of you._  
  
He had even tried to avoid her, but to no avail. Fate always pushed them together.   
  
Tyrion had said she believed it was her destiny, in truth it was his.   
  
His cursed destiny that led them to where they were now.  
  
And he would do anything to make it stop.  
  
~  
  
This time was different.   
  
This time they were allowed to be lovers, to enjoy more than mere scraps of happiness together.  
  
Jon waited and waited, he didn't understand.  
  
Until  _she_  remembered.  
  
_Jon_ , she cried out his real name in pain as she clutched her head, the sudden onslaught of century old memories rushing through her mind.  
  
She flinched away from his touch as he tried to comfort her.  
  
_Dany, please_ , he said unwittingly and the memory of what he had done after he said that to her the last time made her grab the keys and run to her car.  
  
She saw him fading away in the rear view mirror, standing hopelessly as he watched her leave him once again.  
  
As it turned out, fate had other plans for them.   
  
She was pregnant.

When Dany found out, the last thing she wanted was to tell him. She had already cut him off, carved a new life for herself far away from him and all the atrocities of the past.  
  
All the crimes in between them, all the guilt and fear and anger.  
  
To his credit, he hadn't chased after her. She was relieved, she constantly told herself.  
  
Yet the good memories were just as bad, of this lifetime and all the previous ones. They haunted her just the same.  
  
There was nothing she wanted more than to go back and erase everything, scrub her mind clean and pure.  
  
Though as her child grew inside her, she knew, despite it all, he was the one thing she wouldn't take back. He was going to be her salvation. He was also her ultimate weakness.  
  
When she felt the first wave of pain, she caved. As her neighbour rushed her to the hospital, she dialed the number she hadn't pressed in over a year.

~  
  
Jon could hardly believe his ears. After months of silence, to receive a phone call where he learned he was about to be a father was overwhelming to say the least. Equal parts fear and hope gripped his heart.  
  
_Please let them be okay, please for once let us be okay._  
  
Of course they weren't.  
  
A complication arose during labor and the doctor gave him a clear choice, mother or child. He knew what she would have wanted, but he didn't care.  
  
He chose her.  
  
When it was over and she held their dead baby in her arms, he finally understood.  
  
_Only a life can pay_ _for another life._  
  
Dany brought her child's hand to her lips. She kissed his tiny fingers one by one, her tears sliding down his limp arm.  
  
She looked up at him with bloodshot eyes.  
  
_What have we done to each other Jon?_  
  
She had no more fight left in her. At the brink of exhaustion, she collapsed in his arms.  
  
Hoping he wouldn't let her drown, that he'd carry her safely to the shore as he should have a millennium ago.  
  
And he did.  
  
~  
  
_He always finds her. And this time he won't lose her._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! The second part is finally here and it was tough. There is still a lot of angst but as the saying goes: We deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people, and we've suffered enough. 
> 
> credit for the lovely moodboard goes to https://adecila.tumblr.com/
> 
> That's basically what happens here, and this song describes this chapter perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKVwinSK4Yk

_Picture yourself in a room full of broken glass_

_Blood on the pieces, the pieces you can't put back_

_A little white light in a sea gone black_

**_My head is a room and the room's full of broken glass_ **

_You can't change me, can you save me?_

_Oh, clean eyes, breaking my heart in all the right ways and_

_No, I don't mind, clean eyes_

_Oh, clean eyes, breaking my heart and breaking my chains and_

_I don't know why, clean eyes._

**XXXXXXXXXXXXX**

The trust between them can best be described as…tentative.

 

After saying goodbye to their child, they found comfort in each other during the initial weeks of mourning.

 

Dany would wake up screaming from nightmares and he would be there to comfort her, wipe her tears away and hold her as she slowly calmed down.

 

She never shared what she saw, but it wasn’t too hard to guess. Sometimes she would moan his name as she twisted and turned in the sheets, other times she would call out for those she had lost so long ago.

 

The words wrenched from her throat with such pain that he could only imagine the horrors that plagued her dreams.

 

One time, as she was falling back asleep, she confided in him how these nightmares began right after she had remembered. During their year apart she had woken up many a night covered in sweat. But it had stopped once she learned she was pregnant.

 

After that, she began seeing dreams of a little boy with dark curly hair.

 

And now she saw the same boy, with blood pouring out of his mouth. Sometimes the boy would morph into Jon, other times she would see herself reflected in him.

 

“Perhaps yet another death for us would have been less cruel.” She muttered into his chest, hands fisting his t-shirt as though she was trying to claw his heart out.

 

 _We still have each other._ He wanted to say. _I still have you._

 

But what were they now?

 

Two broken pieces don’t make a whole.

 

**XXXXXXXXXX**

She was the one who suggested therapy.

Once the dust had settled and the burning grief of losing their child had somewhat subdued, they were adrift again.

 

They slept in separate rooms, did overtime at work, avoided each other during the weekend.

 

Jon was trying to give her the space he knew she desperately needed.

 

Dany was trying to figure out where to go from here.

 

Some days she wanted to get up and leave, run away again, from him and everything he represented. A fresh start, and this time there would be no chance of another child.

 

But she couldn’t. Not after what she knew now. Not after what they had shared, what they had gone through.

 

She wouldn’t be able to find her peace of mind somewhere else, alone or with someone new unless her memory was completely wiped out and she forgot all the demons of her past.

 

But she couldn’t do that. She would have to learn how to live with them, conquer them, defeat them.

 

Perhaps therapy would do them both some good. Perhaps it wouldn’t help at all.

 

Either way, she had nothing to lose. It couldn’t hurt to try.

 

**XXXXXXXXXXX**

 

They had separate sessions, she insisted on that.

 

When she first began talking to Dr. Rita, she found herself failing to adequately describe all that troubled her.

 

Not only because of how traumatic it was to talk about, but also because she couldn’t actually reveal major aspects of their history together.

 

She couldn’t tell her about the past lives, about the time he had been a soldier and she had been a nurse, the time she was a small child and he was her teacher.

 

The time she was a ruler of seven Kingdoms and he was her downfall.

 

No way for her to say all that without appearing like a true lunatic.

 

 _Mad Queen indeed._ She thought with a wry twist of her mouth.

 

So instead she said, “It’s complicated. I can’t leave him. Try as I might, there’s no way for me to run free with reckless abandon. I’m tied to him by the red thread of fate and sometimes I feel it will strangle us both.”

 

Okay so maybe that didn’t sound all too sane either.

 

But Dr. Rita looked at her with those patient, gentle eyes as always. She never made her feel crazy.

 

In a soft voice, she asked, “If you’re both drowning, isn’t it better to let go of each other than hold on?”

 

**XXXXXXXXXXXXX**

 One day, out of frustration, she picked up her phone and canceled the session.

 

Jon raised his eyebrows.

 

“What’s the point? Dr. Rita is a wonderful woman and a great therapist but we won’t get anywhere if we can’t talk freely. If we just keep going round and round in circles.”

 

She flopped down on the living room couch. “It’s useless.”

 

He grabbed a chair and sat down in front of her.

 

“Then talk to me.”

 

“What?”

 

“Pretend I’m her. Or someone else, anyone other than Jon.”

 

She opened her mouth to protest but he said, “Just give it a shot at least. Can’t hurt to try.”

 

That had been her constant mantra. _It couldn’t hurt to try._

 

Oh well.

 

**XXXXXXXXXXXXX**

 

“What hurts me the most, is that _he_ was the one who did it.” She spat out through gritted teeth.

 

Jon was right, it did work. It was cathartic to work through her sorrow and rage with the very same person who induced it.

 

Though right now he was someone else.

 

Right now he wasn’t Jon, he was a nameless, faceless person she could pour her heart out to.

 

“Why couldn’t it have been literally anyone else? His deadly little sister, one of those Wildings that followed his every command, or even a bloody Northern soldier I don’t know?! Why did _he_ have to be the one to plunge the dagger in my chest?”

 

Logically she knew why. He was the only one she trusted to get close enough. And a fine way he had repaid that trust.

 

But logic and her emotions did not go hand in hand during these sessions so she simply aired out her grievances without any rationale.

 

Her throat became constricted with the effort to not cry, to hold the tears at bay. But she couldn’t, and soon they were streaming down her cheeks.

 

She could tell he was having a hard time maintaining the façade, holding onto the appearance of the nonchalance of an outsider.

 

“Would it have made things easier?” he asked.

 

“Of course it would have! Even if he knew, even if he sent the assassin himself, at least I would have died knowing that he didn’t have the heart to do it himself. He couldn’t kill me himself. But when I felt the pain from that sharp blade, I wondered, did he ever truly love me?”

 

Her voice was barely a whisper. “Or was everything a lie right from the start?”

 

Jon couldn’t do it anymore.

 

“It’s wasn’t a lie. I did love you. I loved you so much but I couldn’t show it to you. I couldn’t do you justice. I failed you and I’m so sorry.”

 

He moved forward and tentatively wrapped his arms around her, giving her a chance to push him away.

 

After a moment or two, she buried her face in his neck, the echoes of ‘why, why, why,’ thrumming against his pulse.

 

In response, he could only manage “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

 

**XXXXXXXXXXXXX**

 

Sometimes he caught her staring intently at the crackling flames in the hearth.

 

Dany would sit in a trance by the fireplace, eyes glazed over and mind lost in another era.

 

He stopped her just in time as she absently reached forward to touch the blazing inferno.

 

Jon grabbed both her shoulders and shook her out of it.

 

Still slightly dazed, she asked him, “Why did I do it, Jon?”

 

“Why the blood of innocents? I don’t understand. I don’t know why I did it. I promise I didn’t want to. I never wanted that. Never the blood of innocents.” She repeated over and over.

 

“We are not those people anymore Dany. I can’t wield a sword and you can’t touch fire. It’s been centuries. We need to let go. If we look back, we are lost.”

 

That seemed to pull her out of her rumination.

 

“There’s a reason we’ve been given a new chance Dany. Either we embrace it, or we let the past eat us alive.”

 

She looked at the flames, scorching hot and unforgiving where once it had only been warmth to her.

 

No longer the Mother of Dragons, no longer a magical being.

 

_Yet I am still here._

 

She turned her gaze back to Jon, his brown eyes brimming with conviction.

 

_And so is he._

**XXXXXXXXXXXX**

Bit by bit, they chipped away at the wall standing between them.

 

Jon and Dany continued their sessions with Dr. Rita, and the ones with each other at home. Both served a different purpose.

 

Dr. Rita knew something had changed when she noted a shift in her language.

 

After several sessions of only talking in terms of “he”, “me” and “I”, one day she finally said, “And _we_ are trying to do better.”

 

The first time she spoke of them as a unit.

 

Remarkable progress.

 

She smiled up at Dany, and her beautiful client returned it, cautious hope in her eyes.

 

**XXXXXXXXXXXX**

They fell into a pattern.

 

Where before they would take measures to avoid each other, now they made a habit to spend time relearning one another.

 

It was an unspoken rule to dedicate a few days every week to not speak of the past.

 

They had time allocated to work through their demons, and then there was time to heal and move forward.

 

Dany told him about the new manager at work who was a total tool. Jon jokingly offered to rough him up.

 

They visited museums, parks and went to the movies. They held hands during long walks on the beaches, and on days she felt bold they would even kiss under a moonlit sky.

 

A high fever made Jon bedridden and she nursed him back to health, ignoring the strange sense of dejavu and gnawing fear at the back of her mind.

 

It wasn’t easy. It took practice and effort and sometimes they would fall apart.

 

But they helped each other get right back up, brush off the dust, and move on.

 

She finally knocked on his door one night, her stomach coiled with anticipation and heart beating wildly in her chest.

 

He opened it and simply looked at her.

 

No words needed to be exchanged.

 

Turns out, it was quite natural to get lost in each other once more.

 

**XXXXXXXXXXXX**

In the beginning, she didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to consider that it was happening again.

 

But as the days turned into weeks, it became harder to ignore the obvious signs.

 

She was pregnant once again and she was terrified.

 

So was Jon.

 

As their child grew, so did their fear, a thousand different scenarios running through their minds. So many ways it could go wrong.

 

When her due date arrived, Jon kissed her brow and told her, “We’re going to make it through Dany.”

 

No, he promised her. He _had_ to believe in this, in them.

 

It was a long, painful delivery. Hours upon hours of fighting and screaming until finally, their daughter came.

 

Her loud wail sounded like music to Dany’s ears. Her beautiful baby girl, with a tuft of silver hair and shining violet eyes.

 

“She looks just like you,” Jon said with a watery smile as he held her in his arms. _Breathing, alive, and theirs._

Dany could hardly believe it. And yet here she was.

 

They had overcome every obstacle, passed the test of time and fate itself, to arrive at this moment.

 

They deserved it.

 

Dany placed her daughter’s tiny head against her chest, and Jon slid into the bed next to her, holding them both close.

 

A sense of immense peace filled her as she felt both their heartbeats drumming in tune with hers.

 

_Yes, after everything, we deserve this._

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it <3
> 
> It was difficult to write because I wondered why I so easily accept and continue shipping them even after one murdered the other (and sadly this isn't even my first otp where that happened, another one of my favorite fantasy female characters (Morgana) was murdered by the dude I shipped her with (Merlin) and I also wrote resurrection fics for them. I asked myself would I have done the same if it had been the other way around and the women killed the men? Would fandom accept it so quickly and try to justify it in our writings or would we find a better partner for the poor guy. Or am I just pontificating aimlessly and making it deeper than it was? Just something about it struck me and it all came down to us taking canon and molding it for our own pleasure, denying the writers to ruin a pairing we hold dear, even as we work around their nonsense. 
> 
> I hope I managed to do that lol, who knows...but yeah. Lemme hear your thoughts <3


End file.
